NRC Wants College-Entrance-Exam Scores Downplayed

As a student nervously ponders a question on the SAT, he may believe
his choice of filling in A or D will make or break his prospects at the
college of his choice.

But the test's scores shouldn't be the determining factor in a
college application if they are used properly in the admissions
process, according to a National Research Council report issued last
week.

Instead, the scores would be an initial indicator of whether a
student could make the grade at the institution. Several other
factors--including high school grade point average, academic interests,
and ethnicity--should be the determining ones for college-admission
officers making the decision, the panel of higher education leaders and
testing experts who wrote the report says.

The problem is not with admission policies, the panel says, but with
the perceptions of college applicants and policymakers that SAT and ACT
entrance-exam scores are the most important figures on a student's
college application.

"The pressures are increasing to rely on the test scores," M.R.C.
Greenwood, the chancellor at the University of California, Santa Cruz,
and a co-chair of the panel, said in releasing the report at an event
here. "I don't think they are being misused, but the pressure is there
for that happen."

Imprecise Measures

Ms. Greenwood and other authors of the report say they hope the
44-page document will inform the public of the proper role of SAT and
ACT scores in admissions.

The public perception is that those scores "are precise measures" of
a college applicant's intelligence, the report says. In reality, the
tests produce scores that "are estimates of student performance with
substantial margins of error," it says.

"People often have the notion that a score on the SAT of, say, 610,
is clearly superior to a score of 600," said Robert L. Linn, a
professor of educational measurement at the University of Colorado at
Boulder and the other co-chair of the NRC panel.

In fact, the scores of two applicants could vary as much as 100
points on each section of the SAT if they took the exams on a different
day or under different conditions, Mr. Linn added.

The SAT, sponsored by the New York City-based College Board, is
divided into two sections, verbal and reasoning, each of which is
scored on a 800-point scale. The ACT, which is offered by the Iowa
City, Iowa, nonprofit ACT Inc. , includes subject-matter tests in
English, mathematics, reading, and science. Ninety percent of colleges
require scores from either of the exams as part of their application
process.

Entrance-exam scores can be useful, the report says, for admissions
officers by helping them sort applicants into general categories:
students who obviously meet the academic demands of the college, those
who do not, and those on the fence.

But when making final decisions, colleges should downplay those
scores and look at other factors, such as GPAs, extracurricular
activities, and application essays.

College officials also must make admission decisions based on
"overarching intellectual and other goals," the report says. They must
decide, for example, whether they will admit students who will pursue a
variety of academic interests.

If a school relied too heavily on test scores, it would have an
enrollment disproportionately filled with science and engineering
students, who tend to do better on tests than social science and
humanities students, according to John D. Wiley, the provost at the
University of Wisconsin-Madison and another member of the NRC
panel.

How Much Diversity?

A school also must decide if it wants a diverse student body, with
representatives from different races, ethnic backgrounds, and regions,
the report says.

Test-score data have fueled "reverse discrimination" lawsuits
against the University of Texas and the University of Michigan systems,
but Ms. Greenwood and Mr. Wiley defended the rights of those
institutions to select students based on factors other than scores.
"You have to explain that [admission-test] scores aren't the whole
ballgame," Ms. Greenwood said. "The scores were a part of it, but not
all of it."

The gap between the test scores of minority students and white
students is smaller than the one between engineers and humanities
students, Mr. Wiley added.

An official of the College Board said her organization was already
doing much of the work to educate the public about the proper role of
test scores in the admission process. "Perhaps we have to look at it so
people not only understand it but apply it," said Janice A. Gams, a
board spokeswoman.

Vol. 18, Issue 43, Page 10

Notice: We recently upgraded our comments. (Learn more here.) If you are logged in as a subscriber or registered user and already have a Display Name on edweek.org, you can post comments. If you do not already have a Display Name, please create one here.

Ground Rules for Posting
We encourage lively debate, but please be respectful of others. Profanity and personal attacks are prohibited. By commenting, you are agreeing to abide by our user agreement.
All comments are public.